The
NSA leaker is being protected by China and has a home waiting in Russia.
Yet, conservative media personalities such as Glenn Beck are saying that
he is a hero. They seem to think that the NSA’s terrorist surveillance
program has been used by Obama to go after conservatives, in the same
way we have seen in the IRS scandal. There is no evidence this is the
case.

If there
is evidence that Obama is using the NSA terrorist surveillance program
to monitor and harass conservatives, where is it? We have that evidence
in the IRS scandal, but not here.

The
NSA program is designed to follow and monitor foreign terrorists and enemy
agents with U.S. connections. It remains to be seen if the program has
been used to go after our real enemies, especially the Islamists, but
the outrage against the NSA that has followed the revelations of Edward
Snowden is mystifying. The NSA, after all, is a spy agency. The NSA is
a front-line intelligence agency that monitors electronic communications.
One can argue that we need more, not less, surveillance of our enemies
operating on American soil. But that side of the argument is missing from
the media coverage.

“The
Signals Intelligence mission [of the NSA] collects, processes, and disseminates
intelligence information from foreign signals for intelligence and counterintelligence
purposes and to support military operations,” the NSA’s website
says. “This Agency also enables Network Warfare operations to
defeat terrorists and their organizations at home and abroad, consistent
with U.S. laws and the protection of privacy and civil liberties.”

There
is no evidence, despite Snowden’s claims, that these laws were violated.
But there is abundant evidence that Snowden violated several laws, including
the Espionage Act. Former Ambassador John Bolton told
Newsmax TV that Snowden committed treason and an act of war against
the U.S.

Writing
in The Wall Street Journal, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey
said, “Some wallow in the idea that they are being watched,
their civil liberties endangered, simply because a handful of electrons
they generated were among the vast billions being reviewed in a high-stakes
antiterrorism effort. Of course, many are motivated politically or ideologically
to oppose robust intelligence-gathering aimed at fending off Islamist
terrorism. Criticism from that quarter can be left to lie where it fell.”

His
reference to politically- or ideologically-motivated opposition to “robust
intelligence-gathering” is what lies behind the NSA “scandal.”
It is significant that far-left Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, a
recipient of the “Izzy” award, named after leftist journalist-turned
Soviet agent I.F. Stone, was Snowden’s mouthpiece. Greenwald, an
American who hates the U.S. so much he lives abroad with his homosexual
lover, believes Obama has been too accommodating to the “national
security state.”

The
“leaker” in this case supported
Obama, thinking he would reform the intelligence agencies, and gave money
to Ron Paul for president. Ron Paul talks like the far-left on foreign
policy issues. As a member of Congress, he appeared on Iranian Press TV
and Russia Today (RT). He thinks we are to blame for Muslim terrorism.

Equally
important, the political left is using this controversy to subvert, or
even eliminate, a program that is designed to protect the American people
from terrorism.

That’s
why you find the George Soros-funded “Free Press” organization
now launching a “Stop Spying on Us” campaign. On June 14,
various far-left and Muslim groups are holding a
press conference and protest “against FBI and NSA spying,”
bringing the FBI into the mix of federal agencies that have supposedly
gone too far. These groups include the Defending Dissent Foundation, CODEPINK,
Washington Peace Center, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the Institute
for Policy Studies and the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Maryland.

CODEPINK
is the Marxist group that worked with and promoted CIA defector Philip
Agee, an identified Cuban DGI and Soviet KGB agent. It sends people to
Cuba on a regular basis.

Some
of these groups constitute Obama’s base. Their target, however,
is not really Obama but rather the CIA and the FBI. They want to destroy
law enforcement and the intelligence community.

If they
undermine this NSA program, there can be no doubt the beneficiaries will
be terrorists and foreign agents for China and Russia. That helps explain
why China is protecting Snowden and Russia wants to give him a home.

America
has conducted intelligence operations from the beginning of the republic.
Congress created a panel called the Committee of Secret Correspondence
on November 29, 1775, with “wide-ranging duties” that included
covert operations, devising codes and ciphers, the hiring of secret operatives,
the funding of propaganda, and even “the surreptitious opening of
private mail,” according to an
account of that critical period of time. America has always had enemies,
and always will. And some of those enemies operate within the United States
but maintain connections abroad.

It is
curious that the NSA revelations came at a time when Barack Obama was
meeting with China’s new president, Xi Jinping, and was under pressure
from the Defense Department and the intelligence community to confront
China over its anti-American cyber-attacks. A January 2013 report
from the Defense Science Board said the cyber threat “is serious,
with potential consequences similar in some ways to the nuclear threat
of the Cold War.” A confidential version of the report said more
than two dozen of the nation’s most sensitive advanced weapons systems
have been compromised by Chinese hackers. The evidence indicates that
the Chinese stole the plans for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the
F-22 combat aircraft, among others.

But
rather than insist that Obama confront the Chinese over their thievery,
the attention is now turning to our response, which somehow supposedly
crosses a line of some sort. And the pressure from “progressives”
is now mounting to undercut the agency that is at least partly designed
to protect our own people and industries from foreign regimes such as
those in Beijing and Moscow.

Former
CIA officer Robert Baer said on CNN that officials in Washington, D.C.
were looking at the Snowden case as possibly being Chinese espionage against
the U.S. This explanation makes complete sense in the context of when,
how, and why it occurred at this time. “As a counter intelligence
investigation,” he
said on CNN, “it would default to that [Snowden as a defector]
immediately. The CIA and the FBI look at China as a hostile country. It
has an active intelligence program against the United States. It would
do anything to get a source, like this young man. Right now I’d
be very surprised if they’re not questioning him [about] what he
knew.” He went on, “…Honolulu is an important relay
station for the National Security Agency. All our spying on China would
be filtered through there. What did he know, what didn’t he know?
What did he have access to, what did he bring out? I mean, the Chinese
would be remiss not talking to him right now.”

Instead,
however, almost all of the media attention is now on whether the NSA,
not the Chinese regime, has gone too far. The Chinese hackers must be
laughing at the U.S.

It is
significant that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
is quoted by Moscow-funded Russia Today (RT) as saying, “We
have been in contact with Snowden’s people in terms of the possible
advice and support we can give him.”

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Who
are those people?

The
Chinese, the Russians and other adversaries and enemies of the United
States have benefitted immensely from the WikiLeaks disclosures, which
included classified information about U.S. counter-terrorism efforts.
In return, as a show of thanks, the Russians gave Assange a TV show, where
he interviewed such figures as Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, U.S.
Marxist professor Noam Chomsky, and Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa.
The latter gave Assange asylum in his embassy in London, so he wouldn’t
have to face sex crimes charges in Sweden.

Assange
had always denied having any personal contact with Bradley Manning, the
Army analyst on trial for espionage. But that was a lie. Evidence in the
Manning trial demonstrated collusion between them and also disclosed that
WikiLeaks material was found in the possession of Osama bin Laden.

It is
telling that Snowden has a creepy backer like Julian Assange. Conservatives
defending Snowden should think twice about what they are doing and the
real story they are missing.